Pentagon bars 4 reporters from Guantanamo hearings

New York, May 7, 2010—The U.S. military should allow four banned reporters from different Canadian and U.S.-based media outlets to cover military commission proceedings in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The reporters were banned after each named a U.S. Army interrogator after being told to keep him and other participants in the proceedings anonymous. The proceedings were about the status of Guantanamo prisoner Omar Khadr, who accused the interrogator of torturing him at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

The interrogator, Joshua
Claus, had previously identified himself when speaking about the case two years
ago in a brief interview with the Toronto
Star. Claus has denied to the Star that
he abused Khadr.

“This action strikes us
as punitive, since the information that military authorities are seeking to
censor is already in the public domain,” said CPJ Executive Director Joel
Simon. “Moreover, we’re deeply concerned about the impact of this action, which
affects reporters who have covered this story extensively and are deeply
knowledgeable about the issues. Banning these reporters therefore will have a
significant impact on the coverage. We urge the Pentagon to reconsider this ban
and allow these veteran reporters to do their jobs.”

After Claus’ July 12,
2008, interview appeared in the Star,
other Canadian-based media outlets also named him in their stories. In May
2005, The New York Times named Claus,
then with the rank of Army Specialist, in a separate, interrogation case
involving the fatality of a detainee at the U.S.
air base at Bagram, Afghanistan.

Earlier this week, Claus
appeared as a witness in a military commission hearing for Khadr. During the
proceedings, court participants referred to Claus as “Interrogator No. 1,”
according to The Associated Press. But Michelle Shephard of the Toronto Star, Paul Koring of The Globe and Mail, Steven Edwards of
Canwest News Service and Carol Rosenberg of The
Miami Herald each named Claus in their stories. Shephard is the same
reporter who first obtained an interview with Claus in relation to the same
Canadian detainee back in 2008. Koring and Edwards have each also closely
covered Khadr’s case.

On Thursday, the
Pentagon informed the news organizations that their four reporters were now
banned from covering further proceedings. The reporters “violated established
and agreed-upon ground rules governing reporting on Military Commissions
proceedings at Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba,” reads
the statement by Col. Dave Lapan, Director of Defense Press Operations.

The Pentagon statement
was sent by e-mail to the four news organizations, and it quoted the ground
rules that reporters must agree to in order to gain entry to military commission
proceedings: “The identities of all commission personnel, to include the
Presiding Officer, commission members, prosecutors, defense counsels, and
witnesses, will not be reported or otherwise disclosed in any way without prior
release approval.” The e-mail goes on to state that the ban applies only to the
four individual reporters involved, and not to their news organizations, which
may now send other reporters to cover the same proceedings.

Editors at the different
news outlets protested the Pentagon action. “We strongly disagree with the Pentagon's interpretation of its own
rules, and intend to fight the ban as a matter of Canadian public interest in
these hearings,” said The Globe and
Mail’s editor-in-chief, John Stackhouse. “The name in question was a matter
of public record. Banning the information now—when it is already known around
the world—serves no apparent purpose other than to raise more questions about
the credibility of the Guantanamo
courts.”